Liar
by Mitzzi
Summary: If they had been honest, maybe. But they were accomplished liars that could fool even themselves. Five times the five Blacks lied that almost changed everything. ONESHOT


**So I just got back home two nights ago, and while _trying _to motivate myself to work on my only multi-chapter story, this came to mind. Tell me what you think :)**

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><p><em>Liar, liar, pants on fire…<em>

Regulus never mentions Sirius after he is disowned, not even while his cousins rant or cry. Bellatrix makes elaborate plans of painful revenge, while Narcissa flinches at the sound of his name, and Andromeda watches with a thoughtful look on her face. But Regulus does nothing, says nothing. Quietly plotting. Revenge is a dish best served cold, he thinks, something that Sirius never understood.

Years pass, darkness rises on a cloudy night in the shape of a glowing green skull, and things change. Bellatrix's plans become more infrequent, fading into the endless fanaticism that seems to motivate her, Narcissa no longer represses a flinch at his name, Andromeda is long gone, and Regulus still has not acted.

He is known as the Recruiter now, famous for his ability to take one look at a person and reveal their deepest secrets and darkest desires (_left pinkie turns, trying to restrain himself, pupils dilate a sixteenth of a centimeter, he's scared–but still listening, a good sign, vein muscle twitches, wants to speak, inhales too loudly, he wants in. Welcome to the Death Eaters_). It's a talent Regulus uses daily, recruiting family after family without a threat or curse passing through his lips. However, it is only after the Dark Lord expresses an interest in having a spy against Dumbledore, that an idea comes to mind.

It is the perfect revenge; Sirius will lose the brothers that replaced his _real _one, and Regulus will be there to watch his perfectly formed bloodtraitor lie fall apart. So he rids himself of guilt (_Sirius deserves it, he does, hedoeshedoes_) and knocks on Peter Pettigrew's door.

In the end, his master is little more than a halfblood bastard who has committed the most vile crime against nature, and Regulus goes to right his wrongs. As the Inferi drown him in a forgotten lake he experiences the single moment of clarity before death that books are so fond of creating, and his greatest regrets pass through his mind. He sees the faces of men, women and children, all with magical blood, who he killed for a madman's cause, and he sees Sirius, kneeling in a destroyed house, cradling the body of James Potter in his arms, and throwing his head back to scream at the sky.

Regulus tells himself he's only sorry that he won't be alive to see it.

_It_ _begins_ because Regulus can convince himself of this, and so he manages to die with his ever-present smirk still etched on his face.

-X-

_If you're happy and you know it clap you hands…_

_It_ _continues_ because Andromeda has always been too proud for her own good.

As a child she is too proud to apologize, something that fades over time, but never really goes away. The day she leaves her family, however, will never fade from her memory with time, and she can remember her mother's last words to her with perfect clarity: _"You'll regret it, Andromeda Black. You'll regret it and coming running back home saying sorry, and I'll be waiting!"_ It is shouted with absolute certainty, and Andromeda disapparates with a huff, reminding herself that her mother could never understand the type of love she and Ted share–_all her mother has is an arranged marriage, a union between to powerful families._ _What does she know? _Andromeda swears to herself that she'll never lower herself to go crawling back to her parents, and she never does.

So when Ted comes home smelling of sex and cigarettes, she turns the other way, and when he won't look at their daughter for the first for years of Nymphadora's life (_because she can't control her ability, and he doesn't want a _blue _daughter, oh no, no, no_) she ignores it with a practiced smile that had been drilled into her from birth.

And she isn't crossing her fingers when Nymphadora leaves for Hogwarts, (_because if her daughter was Slytherin, they might accept Andromeda the way she is now, without an apology or reluctant admittance leaving her lips_) and she isn't disappointed when Nymphadora joins Hufflepuff. Instead she's welcoming Ted into bed with a smile, and ignoring the fact that it's not her name he whispers into the darkness.

She's happy.

And saying otherwise would be admitting she was wrong all along.

-X-

_Three blind mice, see how they run…_

There's a boy flying through the sky, swooping after birds with a whoop of joy, the perfect seeker, and Sirius is a child again. The boy lands with a flourish, letting out an impatient, "Well?" and Sirius gives his brother a teasing grin.

"Gryffindor will win for sure, Slytherin doesn't stand a chance no matter what!" He declares, waiting for Regulus's indignant retort.

Instead the boy smiles and blushes with a muttered, "Thanks," and Sirius is an adult once more, staring at his young godson.

He adds a "Just like your father" to the praise (_even though James was a Chaser through and through_) and the pair walk back inside.

It's Azkaban, Sirius tells himself, just the years in Azkaban playing with his mind.

And later that year when the word comes that the rest of the Death Eaters have been broken out of Azkaban, Sirius gets roaringly drunk with his old friend Remus, and decides that the funny feeling in his stomach is rage.

When a few days afterwards Sirius says "I wouldn't wish Azkaban on anyone," in response to a rude comment by Mundungus Fletcher, he is immediately corrected.

"Except the Death Eater scum that _just_ fucking escaped!" Moody declares, and the rest of the table raises their glasses in a toast.

Sirius follows suit, reminding himself that he doesn't see the tragic heroism in the woman who went to Azkaban for her friends, and had once whispered to him through the bars of her cell that if she had known he was a Death Eater she would have claimed to have Imperiused him as well.

It's just Azkaban, messing with his feelings, he thinks, and that's that.

_It doesn't end, _because Sirius has twelve years of excuses.

-X-

_He got out of bed, and bumped his head, and didn't get up in the morning…_

_The descent begins_ because Blacks don't cry–they laugh instead.

Bellatrix laughs through the destruction of her family, the death of her cousin, the marriage of the man she loves to a girl who is her family, and her fourteen years of hell. And then she finds she can't stop.

Bellatrix laughs as she faces Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, her voice echoing his own. She laughs as they throw spell after spell (_none lethal, though neither knows why_) and she laughs when her curse (_only a stunner_) launches him towards the Veil of Death.

Bellatrix laughs as her non-verbal accio doesn't work, and doesn't dare try it aloud (_she only wants a fair fight, but they wouldn't understand_) and she laughs at the Potter boy's anguished cry.

Potter chases after her, unforgivable on his lips, and as Bellatrix corrects him (_"You have to _mean _it, _want _it"_) she realizes she never threw an unforgivable at Sirius.

He destroyed her family, and she's killed people for far less. Bellatrix decides it would have worked, and resolves not to think on it again.

The aurors appear and she disapparates in her Lord's arms, giddy with the taste of victory (_another bad apple cleared off the tree_)but she can't help but wonder why she hasn't stopped laughing.

-X-

_Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after…_

_It_ _ends_ because Narcissa's world in ending, she's taking someone else's with her.

She's betraying Bella and Lucius, probably sentencing them both to death, going against anything she has ever believed in (_does believe in_) but she doesn't care.

Narcissa knows her marriage to Lucius was a union of convenience, he needed a wife before the deadline if he wanted to claim the title Lord Malfoy, and she was the only unmarried female of a proper pedigree available, Bellatrix still exploring Africa in a search for forbidden magics. Still, Narcissa likes to believe Lucius has fallen in love with her, as she has with him.

But Narcissa sees the look of betrayal on her sister's face as she arrives home amidst preparations for the rushed wedding, and the horror that turns to sad compliance in Lucius' eyes as he realizes that she would have come home in time (_if only he had waited_). Narcissa _tries _to ignore the stoic set of Bellatrix's face as she stands in her spot as maid of honor, and pretends that the cackling laughter she can hear echoing through Black manor isn't her sister's way of crying.

She ignores the implications–_she does, shedoesshedoes_–and pretends not to understand why Lucius fights so hard when Bellatrix and her husband (_another match, made only because it had to be_) declare that if they cannot find the Dark Lord with whatever they learn from the Longbottoms, they are more than willing to be caught and plead guilty for more crimes than they committed. Narcissa knows she should be grateful, but all she can think about is the pleading, _tender _look on Lucius' face as he begged her sister not to do it, not to throw her life away.

So Narcissa quietly hates Lucius, hates him as much as she loves him, hates him and hates Bellatrix with a burning resentment and jealousy. But she loves Draco. She loves Draco, and she _knows _Lucius does too. Maybe, she thinks–only when she's being particularly idealistic–if he could go back in time, he'd marry her again, just to make sure Draco would be born. Narcissa never really believes it though, he loves Bellatrix more, even when she's hideous and half-mad (_she hates him for that too_). Narcissa, though, she loves Draco more than anything, and he's only alive because of Potter, so she prepares herself to lie to her master.

If the Dark Lord falls Lucius will manage to keep them out of Azkaban, he has always had a silver tongue, and even on the run he holds an important place in society, but as an escaped lifer who had already served fourteen years, Bellatrix won't get a word in before they kiss her. It's perfect revenge, she's stealing Bellatrix's soul, and the thing Lucius loves most.

"He's dead." Narcissa declares from where she leans over Harry Potter's miraculously still living body, and represses a smile. She'll break their hearts, like they broke hers.

-X-

_Ashes, ashes, they all fall down…_

Regulus is dead, Sirius and Bellatrix are dead, and Andromeda and Narcissa are only pretending to be alive.

_It's over._

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><p><strong>Please R&amp;R! <strong>

**~Mitzzi**


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